Monday, August 31, 2009

Conspiracy again

Debunking conspiracy theories gets a bit more elegant. Four Corners showed a BBC program 'debunking' a specific consiracy video called 7/7 ripple effect. Like always, the art lies in omission of some of the most mysterious aspects of this attack, combined with ad hominem attacks against some of the producers of these kind of videos that 'undermine the trust in government', and of course a lot emotional appeals.

To be honest, I don't care too much about what exactly happened on the 7th of July 2003 in London. From what I can tell for sure, about 50 people died in 3 three nearly simultaneous bombings on the subway, a forth bomb exploded about an hour later on a bus. I don't condone terror attacks in any way, yet I try to be as compassionate about the loss of innocent life as I can. On that day not only 50 people fell victim to this bomb attack, but about 27,000 children died to maintain global capitalism, like today, and any other day in this century. That's roughly 10 million children each year, sacrificed on the altar of the cruel game of real-life capitalist monopoly.

So if something really sickens me, it's the blatant ignorance of the casualties of the greed of those in power, and unlike terrorism, no government I know of jumps frantically into action to ease this silent, permanent suffering. Here in Australia, corporate sponsors of Saddam Hussein, won't even be held responsible for their immoral behaviour which most likely financed death and torture of much more than 50 people. In case you have no idea what I'm referring to, feel free to refresh your memory of the AWB scandal.

While the corporate war against everyone not born with a golden spoon in their mouth unimpeded continues, ABC raises awareness about the dangers of 'conspiracies'. And it does so in weird ways. One of key points of the 7/7 conspiracies is the allegation that the bombs in the subway were attached underneath the train. The only visual evidence shown in this mockumentary is a hole in a train carriage with metal bending upwards, while the commentary refers to eye witness accounts claiming the opposite. I can't tell whether this shot shows one of the targeted trains, if so, it proves simply an explosion from underneath.

Charles de Menezes found no mentioning at all. No surprise, as this mockumentary aimed in reinstating the myth of the goodness of government, the execution of an innocent man in public by the Metropolitan Police could raise some doubts about the infallibility of the governments attacks to protect life. The lies of Blair government, which supported the US invasion in Iraq, remain unmentioned as well. Why should the viewer be confused by a government willingly killing much more than 50 people in a foreign country with all its military might in a foreign country, when this piece of 'edutainment' wants to prove its undoubtable goodness?

Australia introduced thought crimes into its legislation, and the fear of terror needs reaffirmation. That seem the motivation to dig up some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories floating through the internet. It's all a matter of trust. Trust the mighty, trust the coalition of the willing, which has killed more than a million people in this young century (of course, exclusively in other countries.....), yet fear the highly inefficient 'terrorists', which didn't even kill 10,000 people in the cradle of violently enforced capitalism. And ignore ten thousands of starving kids daily, ongoing genocides throughout the world of indigenous people for psychopathic corporations.

What a wonderful, wonderful world.



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Monday, August 24, 2009



Friday, August 21, 2009

All hail democracy!

This week some interesting news from the freshly blossoming 'democracy' Afghanistan emerged. Afghanistan quietly passes 'marital rape' law, reports ABC, and the media echoed this information nearly as quiet. Australia is a massive island, and naturally mass media caters more for local interests than providing a global outlook. At the moment 'democratic' elections are held in Afghanistan, which made this bit of medieval legalisation of gender inequality disappear from the hearts and minds of the Australian public.

The meaning of the word 'democracy' has been perverted by the US's imperial wars in this century. US troops terrorized the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan, ostensibly to bring 'freedom' and 'democracy' to the people living there. Bereft of any reason, like lemmings, a number of countries, among them Australia, supported the US terror campaign. About 8 years after the US has started its war against the world, more than a million civilians have been 'freed' of their lifes, several millions have been 'freed' of their homes.

Iraq transformed from a secular totalitarian regime into a US satellite divided along religious lines, Taliban and sharia law have again a stronghold in Afghanistan. The right to vote, so it seems, does not necessary mean an influence to the way people are governed. The German population elected the Nazi party, certainly not with the intention to replace democracy by a totalitarian system.

In hindsight, many people wonder how this systematic destruction of human life could happen. Somebody asked me lately whether you can be born as a Nazi. Although Germany's major event in recent history (the peaceful revolution in East Germany just 20 years ago) indicates the non-existence of 'Nazi genes' or any other prevalence of Germans for genocide, the memory of Germany's 'evil' phase in history and of the 'heroic fighters' against them dominate the stories about this nation.

The winners of the second world war wanted to prevent history from repeating, or at least said so. They failed badly, violence is still used to prevent peace on this planet. Humans learn a lot by imitation, and glorifying violence to achieve selfish goals sets a truly bad example. History shows the impossibility to prevent civilian casualties in warfare, and even in the 'just' war against Nazi Germany the glorious winners used systematic terror against the population to win the war. Using fire to transform city centers into furnaces that cremated civilians alive in their bomb shelters does not harm the enemy's military, it's an act of terror, nothing else.

This simple lesson from history, warfare always kills innocent people, should have at least cautioned nations from engaging in war. I can't see any justification to kill innocent life, and deny any support to those killers. I don't care too much about the bible, but the commandment "Thou shall not kill" makes a lot of sense to me. Not being a Christian, there must be an amendment to the commandment that allows exemptions for overlords which i haven't seen.

The loss of innocent life was taken as an excuse to kill more innocent life, and in hindsight, all that happened was another imperial war propagandised as a 'just war'. The lies that have led to the invasion of Iraq are now known, hardly anyone cares anymore remembering the start of the invasion of Afghanistan.

Without any evidence about the famous infamous 911 attacks, US officials declared Osama Bin Laden (Immanuel Goldstein) as 'mastermind' behind the attacks. Besides a dodgy video confession there's still no evidence for his involvement in the 911 attacks, and the 911 commission reports names Khalid Sheik Mohamed s mastermind. However, this report came out after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the war propagandists used 911 rhetoric in both cases.

Without any evidence linking Osama Bin Laden to 911, the Taliban denied handing over OBL, and the US terrorised the Afghan population for the distrust of their leaders in American supremacy and story telling. The massacre in Dasht-E-Leili, another Min Lai, and using prisons in Bagram, Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay to torture democracy into civilians came next.

After WW2, the use of secret service against its own population, war propaganda, experiments with human and unjustified invasions were identified as hallmarks of fascism. Government out of control, uniting with big business in order to create a living hell for the majority of its population. Of course, it can not happen 'now', we are only allowed to believe historians belonging to the winning side, it just looks a little bit like corporatism to unqualified spectators like me.

It's not a myth that especially American 'intelligence' services have 'special rights'. There's plenty of evidence for systematic torture, and none that this fascist strategy has ended. It's obvious that Bush and Blair lied to their people to win their support for this terror tour, yet their war crimes remain unpunished. Privacy ceased to exist in the western world, and thought crimes have been established.

Once the American empire has ceased, historians will probably will call the beginning of this millenium 'violent rise of US corporatism'. Now, it is kind of politically incorrect to come to this conclusion, as long as the US repeatedly claim to be the best democracy on this planet they cannot lie again...

Hindsight does not help to learn from history. We have to be honest enough to identify lack of control of national leadership as the major source of injustice on this planet. No matter how we call political systems of government (democratic, monarchistic, totalitarian, fundamentalistic), governments are the biggest threat of innocent life on this planet in the 21. century. Without control, governments are nothing but a gang of criminals. If Bush can get away with murdering more than a million civilians, there political system might be called heaven on earth, but it fails to serve justice. The responsibility to run torture camps looks meager in comparison, so why on earth should Obama do anything to stop it?

Obedience in the military prevents (and often contradicts) reasonable thinking. Australia, as the US lap dog, won't bite the hand that steals their tax payers money for outdated military equipment, and drags Australian soldiers into their business wars. Even now, as the Afghan government reinstates the right of marital rape, Australians soldiers protect 'freedom and democracy'.

As long as the American idea of 'democracy' includes torture, invasion of foreign countries, arbitrary legal systems, no responsibility in office and massive surveillance of its own population, to name of few expressions of American freedom, I dont want democracy. Support for US politics means currently supporting torture, killing and enslaving other countries. Any leader aligning with the US might just promote this idea of 'democracy' in their country. But then, marital rape happens relatively unnoticed and unpunished in this country as well, if it's the law, it can't be wrong, right?



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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Carbon Trading Scheme



For once in the life time of this young nation, Australia wants to set an global example. Australia's responds to the Climate Change meme with a Carbon Trading Scheme, or at least tries to.

In the pre-digital age Australia was too remote from the 'civilised' world (Europe and North America) to have a voice in international politics. The acting empire of the time nevertheless involved the Australian army happily as cannon fodder in wars all over the world, a big part of the Australian National identity consists of bemoaning this useless loss of life while fulfilling 'heroic duties'.

Advances in communication and travel made Australia more accessible and brought it a little bit more on the international radar. Nevertheless, 20 million people on a planet of 6 billion can only interest a limited amount amount of people. Among those are poor and desperate people from Asia and Africa, that even keep up to date with the latest administration changes in Canberra. Although politicos claim rock star status on national level, Mr. Howards war against asylum seekers went unnoticed in most parts of the world.

Mr. Howard lost the position of primary defender of white Australian supremacy to Kevin Rudd, who recently gained global fame as roo killer. Most people involved in the planetary debate about climate change would fail to name Rudd's position in the creation of the next stage of global monetary Ponzi scheme, sorry, Rudd's position towards climate change.

From an Australian perspective his stance toward climate seems more obvious, he wants to introduce a trading scheme to tackle the problem of global warming caused by man made co2. Hold on a second, what exactly do this well sounding abstract terms mean?

The simplified mass media presentation of the 'problem of climate change' goes along that lines: A majority of climate 'experts' interpret data about global warming in a way that suggest CO2 produced by man as 'cause' for this effect. Critics of this interpretation are called 'climate sceptics', and are often pushed into one corner with conspiracy theorists and similar loonies.

The simplified discourse, popularised by George W Bush (you're either with us, or you're a climate sceptic terrorist), helps picking a site. The polarisation follows also the diversion between Dawkinists and religious fundamentalists. 'Science' backs the side of doomsday salesmen, and in our o so rational society one cannot seriously doubt the findings of science, right?

Interestingly, 'science' also backs the other side, so both sides get busy accusing each other of 'wrong science'. Luckily for us, who will have to pay for whatever lunacy is presented as 'solution' to this 'problem', the wise maintainers of our tax money have taken sides for us. They chose the side that allows them to collect more money for their uncontrollable disposal.

I confess my interest in global affairs, I believe my existence as human being entitles me to live where ever I want you, unfortunately this complicated phase of the evolution of human society denies me this natural birth right. The pleasures of every day life, however, require resources from all the world, I think it's quite absurd that the component of the computer I'm typing this rant on might have travelled further around this globe than I have so far. We can no longer distinguish easily 'local produce' and 'globally sourced' products, most manifactured products use materials from all over the world. You need to a lot of ignorance to deny the global interconnectedness of modern life.

Australia owns one of this valuable resources for an industrialised society: coal. It does not help this part of Australia's economy much to have this market taken away by penalising the use of coal for its CO2 emissions. All of a sudden the clear dichotomy of 'right' and 'wrong' science concerning an intangible problem gets mixed up with tangible local business interests, so that discussion of the topic itself degenerate to the usual rhetorical mud slinging.

When we talk about 'global climate', we mean a phenomena happening in a layer roughly 20 km wide above the surface of this planet. Powered by the energy coming from the sun, the 510 million square kilometer surface area interact with the gaseous layer above, distributing water around the globe. Roughly 70 percent of this surface area consists of water, up to 11 km deep, and weather phenomena are obviously linked to this watery quality.

But science does not really understand how this complex interaction develops. The sheer size of the object of scientific prophecy makes long term predictions very doubtable. Mankind has a natural interest in weather phenomena, agricultural societies depend on knowledge of the chance of seasons and the most likely accompanying weather patterns. But we can not seriously claim to have sufficient data of the relevant variables collected to come up with really good model.

In the political debate the focus lays on CO2, sometimes Methan rears its smelly head in discussions as well. Calling these chemicals greenhouse gases creates convenient self fulfilling prophecies: Doomsday is neigh!

But how do we know about the 'effect' of CO2, and how do we do know how much CO2 is in our atmosphere? Remember, we're talking about the volume of our planetary atmosphere, stretching 20km up from a surface of 510 million square kilometers. Pretty big, eh? The only thing possible is sampling, but without clear understanding of the system itself we can hardly estimate what information the samples really carry.

The best observed variable in this game is temperature, and that's where most panic is hinged around. We can observe an increase in average temperatures in different areas of this planet, and swamped islands provide obvious evidence for a rise of the sea level. Yet even the increase in average temperatures depends on the timescale and areas selected, a lot of pseudo scientific arguments are build on skewed data.

The alleged stop in trend of warming lately, which didn't help to break the current drought in Victoria, might be just the use of rough science. Changing the global albedo by chemtrails reduces the amount of solar energy that heats the surface, but without knowing what really happens in the upper layers of our atmosphere deliberately experimenting with nukes and chemicals does not really look like a good idea.

Reducing the amount of toxins we release into the atmosphere, produced by cars, power plants and industry seems like a better idea. If you ever lived next to a coal power plant, or in an area with heavy industry, or in a city overcrowded by cars, you'll instinctively know that this stuff is not really good for the survival of our species. The current target of panicky hyperactivity coincides with those polluters of our more immediate environment, which still fails to convince me about the simple 'more Co2 = more warming = global chaos soon' formula.

I can identify with the alleged targets, reducing the amount of dirt produced by burning fossil fuels, globally, yet I still don't buy into the simplified fallacies promoted with it. I deny to panic if 'nothing happens to tackle the problem'. I rather panic when a trading scheme gets implemented. It looks either ignorant or stupid or brazen to me to praise a financial product as solution to an ecological problem, especially in a year that showed the detrimental effects of inventing monetary schemes. Markets were always quite mysterious 'beings', now they can even cure the climate. Hooray, long live the age of reason.

Science is just not advanced enough to give a reliable prognosis about the development of climate for 50 or 100 years. I don't dare the leap of faith to base my current and future decisions on the prophecies of these kind of 'experts', especially if they attack such a massive problem. Science investigated most of the time dead matter, exploring and understanding of living systems as a systematic part of science is much younger than the time scales spanned by their prognosis.

The idea of the planet as a living system is not intellectual property of the scientific community, they could no longer deny the public interest in the experiental reality of life. Spiritual communities around the globe have no problem considering the planet as living being, although couldn't properly recite any specific story of this type.

So to distract from the fruitless intergroup competition about the meme global warming I ask Mother Earth to inspire me to tell the 'real story' about climate change.

After its birth, given by the sun, young mother earth circled playful around her own father. Looking for expression, she spit out lava, sending her tentacles into the atmosphere around her skins. The outburst of lava, at different places, created a fiery symphony of mother earth's breath. Soon her breath moistened, and fell back on her skin, bringing the four elements together.

The play of fire and water provided pleasure for mother earth, happily humming in sight of her heavenly father. O lovely daughter, her father said, I will nurture you for the rest of my life, but you will have to learn to keep my love. I send you out with enough energy to play with, Unlike me, you cannot shine from the inside, but glow on my rays. Enjoy the ride.

Mother earth felt her skin, hardened surfaces poking out of swaying oceans, and tried to sense the connection to her source. Without heat, the pleasant bubblyness she bathed in, would cease. Bacteria were her first messengers sensing the presence of her father, using his energy to transmit the good news.

Sensing her fathers presence filled her with joy, so mother earth wanted to connect more to gift of her father. Her senses became more complex, and with it her wisdom about the wonders of life. Capturing her fathers energy requires a delicate balance, and sometimes her breath poisened the atmosphere, making the skin shiny by layers of ice.

Her endless desire for more beauty and love for her father made mother earth experimental. Her senses worked independent, creating more and more complexly interconnected balanced systems. But those sensors capable of choosing to merge with the beauty of all life can also choose to destroy the balance required for their own survival.

Mother earth likes diversity, capturing her father's rays in myriad of ways. That makes her feel warm, buzzing, cosy, vibrant, alive. Many species happily became mother earth companions, mankind seems close to make up its group mind whether to go for beauty or destruction.

Millions of years pass away fast for mother earth, having a little fever doesn't disconnect her from her father. A disconnected acting mankind destroys the balance for its own survival, and the tool will be Global Government.



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Tuesday, August 11, 2009



In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Albert Einstein said so, and like so many things he suggested about our universe, his insights still struggle their way into the mainstream meme pool.

His allusion to biblical stories demonstrate his universal geniosity, but as a non-specialist for psychology this revelation of the group mind remains hidden. We have many flock of sheeps nowadays (like always, globally seen), and not all of them organise themselves around religious themes. Music, Sport, Fashion, etc create a cornucopia of 'flocks' with its own set of rules, loves and hates. As we learn from Howard Bloom, human beings are a social species, solitary survival (in evolutionary sense) impossible.

Whether we like it or not, we get assigned to flocks, chose them ourselves or get adopted. Being male, white and german brightened my knowledge of prejudices immensely. Back to Einstein. An immaculate sheep obeys the rules, so must in first place know the rules. As each flock has its own rule set, mostly behaviourly and not written transmitted, choosing a different flock often causes conflict (sorted out by conformity enforcers).

A sheep straying away from the safety of the flocks has to face predators on its own, its survival becomes highly unlikely. Humans are predators themselves, leaving the flock for a while isn't such a big deal - in most parts of the world there is no dangerous wild life left, it's just abundant with flocks of pacified predators.

As Einstein said, to trot along one must be a sheep in first place.

Friday, August 07, 2009

Thought crimes


Manson, portrayed at his trial as a drug-crazed loner with mesmerizing powers of persuasion, ordered devotees to carry out random killings in wealthy white neighborhoods in an effort to trigger an apocalyptic race war.
Not many newspapers use 34 words in a single sentence, using 6 adjectives to colour their message. The Age obviously caters for an educated audience, capable of digesting this abstract description. The Herald Sun would have probably used more specific details, Manson's piercing, dark, gloomy eyes, Acid-head, violent blood-spattering killings, and so on.

This educated audience can easily identify with living in a wealthy white neighborhood, and most likely picks up on the religious connotations of the expression 'devotee'. Oh my fascist god, religiously misled drug-crazies randomly killing in white neighborhoods! This over-simplified implication distracts a bit from the frog-leaps in reasoning connected to the Manson case.

The Age calls Manson a mass-murderer, even though he had not committed any of murders he got accused of, and he did not kill Sharon Tate. Hidden in the middle of this propaganda piece we can find out about Manson's crime: He ordered his 'devotees' to carry out random killings.

After heaps of fear inducing ramblings the powers of reasoning of the typical audience will linger somewhere in the basement, neglecting habitually the quest for facts, which are admittedly relatively sparse in most mass media products. So let's get back to the facts: Manson ordered his devotees to carry out killings. This time only, we step back from the fear of living in a target area, instead, we play crime writer and try to see the perpetrators perspective.

The Age offers a bit of help in elucidating (or rather clouding) the 'how' of Manson's crime: he used his mesmerising powers of persuasion (which obviously failed the judge and jury badly during his trial). We won't find out any more this mesmerising powers, especially how Manson, a drug-crazed loner, acquired this extraordinary interpersonal skills.

How does one order a murder usually? That depends a lot on the moral compass underlying the definition of murder. I consider sending troops into a foreign country 'ordering murder', I don't subscribe to the inevitable loss of innocent life in war situation as 'casualties'. I also have no problem calling the death sentence ordered murder.

While the former forms of 'order to carry out murders' are not covered by any judicial system I know of, hiring a hitman certainly fits both mine and legal systems understanding of this offense. Murder for money encompasses a commercial transaction (henchmen and soldiers get paid....), and holding both sides of the contract responsible seems totally justified.

Manson did not pay any money, he used his 'mesmerising powers of persuasion' to 'order random killings'. If I had a dollar for each time I heard somebody in a pub or similar situation expressing his desire to randomly kill someone, I would be very, very rich. I had no need to work for the rest of my life if the same would apply to media products - each time Rudd justifies the random murders in Afghanistan would fill my account.

Rudd doesn't use mesmerising powers to order random killings, but a large administration and a sanitising language that disguises killings as casualties. All the promises to minimise loss of civilian life failed badly in the 21st century, more than a million killed Iraqis, hundred thousands of dead Afghanis confirm a lesson from history persistently ignored: Each war involves terror acts against a civilian population.

The 'how' of Charles Manson evil crime remains a mystery. As a pacifist, I despise every war, and I certainly feel absolutely unattracted by the idea of an 'apocalyptic race war'. The perspective of fighting in a war does not stop many Australian from joining the army, it seems like some people want to be in a war situation (the recruitment ad's of Australia war machinery make it look a bit like a bunch of high-tech salvos, and leave out the bloody bits).

'Apocalyptic race war' seems to make no sense, this term reminds me a lot of Palestine. Any war is unreasonable, the sad fact that mankind hasn't abandoned this evolutionary obstacle shows the lack of importance of reason in affairs of society. Any war requires various leaps of faith, usually explained with COWDUNG (conventional wisdom of the dominating group).

Benbrika ostensibly planned a 'war on Australian people', with essential support from ASIO. Given their lack of talent in producing terror weapons, it's hard to say whether these people were sufficiently mesmerised by the persuasive powers of Australia secret terror force to go all the way. Nothing but a thought crime. Killing someone is by far not easy, some biologists claim the existence of a 'pre-programmed' inhibition for interspecies killing (that's why war propagandists use a language that dehumanises their victims, killing vermin is easier than killing humans).

Manson did less than ASIO, he didn't provided training, intelligence, money and weapons. As a 'drug-crazed loner' he most likely ranted a lot about his ideas about society with his 'family', which mostly fits into the description of criminal organisation. I'm still mesmerised by the distortion of facts, and the shameless fear mongering of The Age, but not powerfully persuaded by their vilification of Manson.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009



I had some interesting conversations about anarchism lately. Unsurprisingly, quite of diversity of opinions became apparent, which made me wonder whether I continue to call myself anarchist when questions about categorising arise. Maybe I rather invent myself as anarchartist, leaving signs of freedom instead of the usual talking loud.

Hold on, the next groups of people get pissed off here: Artists. Groups? Well, there are the 'real' artists, inspired, driven by their artistic urge. Often unconventional to a degree which appears rather amateurish. You can find them easily in bars, pubs and coffee shops in trendy suburbs, either lounging out to collect inspiration or servicing to make a living. Let us not forget those bastards, who sold out their talent to make some money. At least, they usually know their craft and, most importantly, other people who appreciate their work.

What makes art art? I don't even attempt to answer this, but I found out what makes anarchart anarchart. It's the combination of love, work, technology, inspiration, beauty and freedom. 6 vertexes of a tetrahedron, the smallest unit in universe.

Reclaim yourself.

Monday, August 03, 2009